Introduction  

What is already known about this topic? 

John Dewey is one of the key thinkers associated with American Pragmatism. His ideas are often linked to experiential learning and the role of critical inquiry in the learning process.  

What this report adds 

The Community of Inquiry model is discussed in conjunction with Dewey’s ideas and their implication for technology-mediated learning.   

Implications for practice or policy 

Dewey’s ideas can be used to extend how technologies such as XR can be used to develop online learning environments which promote critical inquiry.  

John Dewey (1859-1952) was a prolific author in the fields of education, psychology and philosophy and is considered to be the most well-known philosopher of education during the first part of the 20 th century (Torres and Yan, 2022). As one of the key contributors to pragmatism , this school of thought can be traced back to Pierce and James working in the late 1800s through to Dewey and influencing subsequent philosophers such as Richard Rorty. Dewey’s version of pragmatism is based on the idea that knowledge emerges from our continuing adaptation to the environment through a cycle of hypothesis testing and subsequent manipulation of the environment. Ideas, therefore, are tested in the context of their utility in helping us adapt to the environment. Underpinning this is the idea that our knowledge of the world is inseparable from our participation in the world and in this sense Dewey’s position represents a theory of knowing rather than a theory of Knowledge (Biesta, 2007). For Dewey, learners do not ‘know’ about the world ‘out there’, they are not spectators of an objective reality, rather, knowing is about the relationship between actions or events and their consequences (Biesta, 2007). Therefore, experience, or as Rousseau calls it ‘the thing itself’ is not a substitute for the symbol system (language) that is used to represent it. As Rousseau says, ‘Never substitute the symbol for the thing signified’ (2020).  

The move from these epistemological claims to the application of these ideas in educational practice has been made by many educators. For example, since the environment co-evolves with our participation in the world, the job for educators is to ensure that a learning environment provides opportunities for this co-evolution to take place. It needs, in other words, to be able to be sufficiently plastic relative to the needs and requirements of learners and this idea can be traced back to the Deweyan idea of the unity between the environment (or nature) and our participation as active participants in shaping the environment.    

Why are these ideas relevant for those working in the field of education and, in particular, in the area of technology-enhanced learning? An influential model that emerged during the early decades of the Internet is the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model.   

The CoI framework is associated with the work of Garrison, Anderson and Archer and their influential paper published in 1999 (Garrison et al., 1999). The framework marries two central components of Dewey’s philosophy of education: inquiry and community (Swan, Garrison, & Richardson, 2009). As Maddrell et al. put it, the CoI is  

“…a theoretical framework for the optimal design of online learning environments to support critical thinking, critical inquiry, and discourse among student and teachers.” (Maddrell, Morrison, & Watson, 2017) (p. 245).   

In terms of the application of these ideas in educational practice, it is clear how the roots of problem-based or inquiry-based learning, for example, can be traced back to the concept of critical inquiry which, in turn, can be linked to the epistemological claims of pragmatism .   

In terms of the CoI model, the design of learning environments needs to be guided by design elements that can support the objectives of critical inquiry and learning as a social enterprise. In the CoI model, these interdependent elements are called social presence , cognitive presence and teacher presence .  In ‘How we think’ (Dewey, 1910), Dewey refers to ‘five distinct steps in reflection’ and Dewey describes how critical thinking is an essential component of the ‘problem’ phase of reflection:  

“The essence of critical thinking is suspended judgment; and the essence of this suspense is inquiry to determine the nature of the problem before proceeding to attempts at its solution.”  

The idea of critical thinking broadly applied to all areas of learning constitutes the substance of the cognitive presence in the model and reflects the idea that critical examination of experience forms the basis of learning.  The dimension of social presence reflects the importance of community in the learning process and this, in turn, represents another aspect of Dewey’s philosophy of education, namely, the construction of knowledge as a shared enterprise or what is commonly known as ‘social constructivism’. Not only is learning defined by an active process of inquiry and reflection, it takes place in a social setting. The role of the educator is also crucial in setting up what Dewey calls the ‘objective conditions’ of the learning environment. As Dewey (1938) says in ‘Education and Experience’:  

“The immediate and direct concern of an educator is then with the situations in which interaction takes place. The ‘objective conditions’ covers a wide range. It includes what is done by the educator and the way in which it is done, not only words spoken but the tone of voice in which they are spoken. It includes equipment, books, apparatus, toys, games played. It includes the materials with which an individual interacts, and, most important of all, the total social set-up of the situations in which a person is engaged.”  

This quote encapsulates the role of the teacher and the social nature of the learning process – or teaching and social presence in the CoI model and the role of interaction in bringing these elements together.  

Technologies and Practice  

What might a CoI look like in practice? The original idea of the CoI addressed the challenge of providing a rich, interactive learning environment to provide opportunities for critical enquiry and knowledge sharing in an online social setting. The tools have come a long way since the early 21 st century but the tools that can satisfy what Dewey calls “objective conditions” of an online learning environment are too numerous to mention and any Learning Management System (LMS) is likely to feature an array of tools whose affordances satisfy a range of educational objectives. This would include tools such as asynchronous discussion forums for online knowledge sharing and construction through to synchronous tools for interactive learning opportunities.   

A Deweyan, online learning environment, however, would still need to be sufficiently plastic to address various learning domains and technologies and this is where XR (virtual and augmented reality) technologies could be utilised to extend the practices of critical inquiry in virtual domains. These technologies are merely sophisticated digital technologies that perform a similar role in a learning environment as Dewey’s 20 th century technologies of ‘equipment, books, apparatus, toys and games’. Indeed, the combination of technology combined with learner-centred approaches can, as Hyslop-Marginson (2004) suggests, provide an opportunity for teachers to create classrooms as ‘democratic spaces’ and to develop the epistemic independence of learners.   

Considerations  

One of the areas that has benefited from Dewey’s pragmatism is the practice of evaluation. Design-based research (Anderson and Shattuck, 2012), for example, borrows heavily from Dewey’s model of praxis as it seeks to evaluate educational interventions in situ. In terms of a Deweyan perspective on evaluation, therefore, it is less about ‘what works’ in the form of a set of universal learning principles and more about ‘what has worked’ in context (Biesta, 2007) and to communicate this as a set of contextually rich set of heuristics for application in similar domains. Our role as educators, therefore, is to be aware of not only the contexts of individual learners but to practise evaluation with this in mind and this approach of contextually bound evaluation is even more important in the age of the application of modern technologies in hybrid learning environments.  Another consideration relates to what we might call the ‘translation problem’ and this has been raised by Miettinen (2000) and Vanderstraten (2002) who question whether the move from Deweyan theory to educational praxis is as simple as it seems.  

What does the future hold for Dewey’s thought?  

The work of Dewey has had an enormous impact in the broad range of practices that make up the field of education. From early childhood education through to online teaching and learning, Dewey’s thought continues to remain relevant and the ongoing currency of his thought is reflected in annual conferences in Dewey studies run by the John Dewey Society ( https://www.johndeweysociety.org ). We have seen how Dewey’s thought is sufficiently flexible to provide the theoretical foundation to account for learning environments that can leverage the affordances of the latest technologies. Future Dewey-inspired studies will likely find that these environments create opportunities for students to practise modes of learning driven by critical inquiry, problem solving and reflection in various domains of practice and disciplines. It will be fascinating to track the shape of problem solving in virtual and augmented worlds complemented by evaluation that is sensitive to the various contexts that constitute the modern learning environment.  

References  

Anderson, T., & Shattuck, J. (2012). Design-Based Research: A Decade of Progress in Education Research? Educational Researcher , 41 (1), 16–25. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X11428813  

Biesta, G. (2007). Why “What Works” Won’t Work: Evidence-based Practice and the Democratic Deficit in Educational Research. Educational Theory , 57 (1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5446.2006.00241.x  

Dewey, J. (1910). How we think . D.C.Heath & Co.  

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education . New York: Macmillan.  

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (1999). Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing in Higher Education. The Internet and Higher Education , 2 (2), 87–105. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1096-7516(00)00016-6  

Hyslop-Margison, E. J. (2004). Technology, human agency and Dewey’s constructivism: Opening democratic spaces in virtual classrooms. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology , 20 (2). https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.1356  

Maddrell, J. A., Morrison, G. R., & Watson, G. S. (2017). Presence and learning in a community of inquiry. Distance Education , 38 (2), 245–258. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2017.1322062  

Miettinen, R. (2000). The concept of experiential learning and John Dewey’s theory of reflective thought and action. International Journal of Lifelong Education , 19 (1), 54–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/026013700293458  

Rousseau, J. J. (2020). Rousseau’s Emile. In A. L. Richards, Philosophy of Education . EdTech Books. https://edtechbooks.org/philosophy_of_education/emile  

Swan, K., Garrison, D. R., & Richardson, J. C. (2009). A Constructivist Approach to Online Learning: The Community of Inquiry Framework. In R. P. Carla (Ed.), Information Technology and Constructivism in Higher Education: Progressive Learning Frameworks (pp. 43–57). Hershey, PA, USA: IGI Global.  

Torres, C. A., & Yan, L. (2022). Paulo Freire and the state-of-the-art of the international journal of lifelong education. Invited article in celebration of 40 years of IJLE. International Journal of Lifelong Education , 41 (6), 651–665. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2022.2164435  

Vanderstraeten, R. (2002). Dewey’s Transactional Constructivism. Journal of Philosophy of Education , 36 (2), 233–246. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.00272